


Dabbled In Love

by mounthonora (hadesfirst)



Category: The School for Good and Evil - Soman Chainani
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/F, I'll add more tags as I update it, Missing Scene, agaster is basically onesided, hestadil is endgame, it's rated teen just in case idk man, like i literally stole lines from the book, really just possible language but like mild language, unless i decide to completely switch directions but probably not
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-13
Updated: 2018-11-10
Packaged: 2019-06-09 14:31:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15269517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hadesfirst/pseuds/mounthonora
Summary: Hester is prepared for paradise alone once she's a real villain, and why wouldn't she be? True Love is an Ever invention that they use to excuse their own weaknesses. Villains can't fall in love.Except she wouldn't mind that Reader girl staying by her side for a while. She wouldn't mind at all.





	1. A Scowl Like That

It hadn’t even been a full hour yet, and Hester was already sick of that wannabe princess Sophie. The fat one, Dot, seemed a little too...cheery for her tastes, but it was nothing that Hester couldn’t handle. But Sophie? Not a chance in hell that a pink-clad freak like that could ever be a villain. The only one of her new roommates that she could really stand was Anadil, so when she and Anadil sat down next to each other on a rotting wooden bench in the Theatre of Tales, waiting for the Welcoming to begin, and with Sophie seemingly becoming possessed by the sight of her shiny-haired brethren across the aisle and wandering off to god knows where, Hester finally felt like she could breathe again. No doubt it was because that hideous flower-scented perfume was out of her nose.

“Oh no, the Reader is gone,” Anadil deadpanned from next to her. “Maybe she’s found her way outside and drowned in the moat without our help.”

It caught Hester a bit off-guard, and she felt a snicker burst out of her. “Or she got lost in the Woods and a stymph’s already eaten her.”

“Oh, but they only attack villains. A stymph wouldn’t touch her,” Anadil quipped, and Hester’s grin widened, letting her new roommate be right (she liked Anadil already, but Hester was usually always right, whether anyone else agreed or not. Anadil could have this one; after all, they weren’t really disagreeing, were they?). 

“All right, lay off her for a bit,” piped up Dot from Anadil’s other side (oh, right, Dot was there too). “She’s a Reader, so she doesn’t have any villain parents to use as role models. That’s what school’s for anyway, so she can learn.” Her fingers curled over the edge of the bench to scrape at the wood. 

“Some of us already know how not to be blonde,” Hester scoffed, earning a raspy chuckle from Anadil. She shifted her eyes over, and Anadil gave her a smirk. A bit of pride swelled up in Hester’s chest; Anadil didn’t seem like someone who did a lot of laughing. Regardless of Dot or Little Miss Pretty-In-Pink, the two of them were going to get along just fine. Maybe Anadil would even be her henchman someday, when Hester was a world-class villain. She needed a right-hand woman (woman, because what boy would ever be on the same page as her) to carry out her plots and plans.

Perhaps she was getting ahead of herself, not even having spent a full day at the School for Evil, but it was hard not to when you had someone like Sophie to compare yourself to. If that was her competition, then Class Captain would be a cinch. 

A loud crash suddenly rang out from the West door of the Theatre as it burst open against the wall, making way for dozens of Everboys stampeding into the hall, engaging in some kind of oddly choreographed sword fighting tournament. All of the Evergirls began tittering like madwomen, of course, and the noise reached its highest decibel yet reaching out for the flowers as the Everboys tossed them out among the crowd. Hester’s eyes practically rolled to the back of her head. If the Theatre were in the School for Evil, there wouldn’t be any time-wasters like this.

“Don’t understand how Good keeps on winning if they spend so much time fighting over who gets to be whose ‘True Love’,” Hester noted to Anadil, making quotation marks with her fingers. Anadil made a low hum of agreement.

“I’d like to have a fancy entrance, though,” Dot mused, nibbling on a splinter of chocolate. 

Hester clenched her jaw. It wasn’t about the fancy entrance. It was about Good being a bunch of elitists over victories that they didn’t deserve. Victories that were probably forced into their favor by a School Master that certainly wasn’t neutral. And here they were, showing off just how obnoxious they were. Was it possible for Good to be any more pompous and annoying?

As if on cue, Tedros of Camelot entered the Theatre, and it was at that moment that, if Hester was inclined to be afraid of things, Hester would have known true fear, because the Evergirls went wild. 

Even Nevers had known that King Arthur’s son was a shoo-in to be accepted into the School for Good, but clearly none of the Evergirls had prepared themselves for the moment that Tedros selected the girl that he thought was the prettiest, with selection by rose. It was as if none of the boys that they had been previously chasing after mattered anymore. A tall blonde girl with heaps of roses in her lap brushed them all aside to wave her hand in the air in an attempt to catch the prince’s glance.

Tedros tossed the rose into the air, and Sophie reappeared from wherever she had been, bursting into a run. Her hands clawed at the air as she sprinted towards the rose with the fury of a villain, yet still wearing the lip gloss of a princess. The change was so stark that Hester was almost impressed. 

However, she still laughed when the wolf guard snatched Sophie out of the air mid-leap and heaved her back towards the Never side of the Theatre. She stopped laughing when the Wolf shoved Sophie into her pew, wedging her between Hester and the wall on the side. That was too close for Hester’s tastes, and she scooted back towards Anadil. 

Sophie was still staring wistfully at Tedros, who was currently sitting next to that tall blonde girl who’d thrown all her roses down to fawn over him, evidently. Sophie’s knuckles went white as she gripped the edge of the side wall, and she sighed airily. 

It suddenly occurred to Hester that a Reader like Sophie might not even know who Tedros of Camelot was. Sophie seemed to lack a lot of important knowledge, although Hester doubted that it was entirely due to her being a Reader. So when Sophie explosively cleared her throat in a clear attempt to get Tedros to turn around, Hester decided to say something. 

“Turn yourself into a mirror. Then you’ll have a chance. His name is Tedros,” she said with a glare in his direction. “And he’s just as stuck-up as his father.”

This didn’t seem to deter Sophie at all, but rather encouraged her, and her jaw dropped as her eyes drifted down to Excalibur. “He’s King Arthur’s son?” she whispered, and continued to scrutinize him even more. 

A grunted hiss came from across the aisle, and Sophie whipped her head around. Hester craned her neck to see what was going on—

Oh. 

The Evergirl who was staring daggers at Sophie didn’t look anything like any Evergirl that Hester had ever seen. She was pallid and lanky and her hair was so black and greasy that it looked like she had a beetle shell on her head. And her scowl. Her scowl spoke a thousand words, even before she mouthed “We’re going home” at Sophie, so clearly that even Hester could tell what she was saying. Anger stabbed out from each corner of her mouth and shot out at Sophie from her bulging brown eyes.

It was a completely captivating scowl. Hester couldn’t take her eyes off of it. And she had to agree that Sophie deserved it. 

What was this girl doing on the Good side of the Theatre when she had a scowl like that?


	2. The Other Reader Revealed

After an overly eventful Welcoming ceremony (Hester’s throat was already sore from non-stop yelling at the Evers and at that dumb two-headed dog), Scowl Girl was piquing Hester’s interest more than ever. Apparently, the rest of Good had also noticed that everything about Scowl Girl seemed better suited for Evil, and Hester couldn’t agree more. They hadn’t spoken or anything, but she liked Scowl Girl already. She had thrown a _headless bird_ at Sophie. What kind of Evergirl carried headless birds around in her pocket? A Nevergirl, that’s who. Hester respected her immediately for it. “It”, of course, being “making Sophie shriek like a banshee”. After the screaming match about whether or not Good deserved to always win (which they didn’t), Hester needed a good laugh.

“Her we like,” Anadil had said once Sophie had regained her composure and taken her seat, and Hester had had to smile. Indeed they did.

That was why, on the walk back to their room, Hester shoved all of her instincts off of a cliff and grabbed Sophie by the shoulder.

“Ow!” Sophie cried, ducking away from Hester’s hand. “I know you’re some kind of witch or whatever, but you’d think you could at least take better care of your nails. They’re _jagged_.” With a huff, she hurried away from Hester and sidled up next to Dot, who was walking ahead of them.

“Hello! It seems we might have gotten off on the wrong foot,” chirped Sophie, gesturing in Dot’s direction. “When I said ‘heaven forbid she has to walk’, I meant in more of a—”

Dot propelled past Sophie with a jab from her elbow, grumbling something about glass slippers and where she’d like to shove them. Sophie stumbled back, her hand flying up to her ribs, and Hester took the opportunity to walk in step with her again.

“Who was that girl you were talking to?” Hester asked, and immediately winced at her own tone. Her intention had been to sound like an interrogator, and here she was sounding desperate. To talk to _Sophie_. 

“Who? Dot?” Sophie pursed her lips and shot an emerald-green glare at the back of Dot’s head. “Even if I said some things that, yes, I regret, resorting to violence was not the answer. And you need to learn your roommates’ names.”

“Not Dot, you idiot!” Hester snarled, and she felt her demon tattoo twitch on her neck. She had a feeling that Sophie would be doing that to her tattoo a lot. “The girl who asked how to see the School Master. The Evergirl.” _Scowl Girl._

“Oh, that’s Agatha, my friend from Gavaldon,” Sophie sighed as smoothed down her hair, fanning it over her shoulders. “God, that one girl said that she farted in someone’s _face!_ I have tried to teach that girl, but clearly she can’t be the least bit sociable without my help. And believe me, I’ve tried to help.”

“Wait, she’s a Reader?” Hester cocked an eyebrow. “And you’re _friends with her?_ How?”

“Mmhm,” hummed Sophie, ignoring Hester’s last question. “And it’s not her fault, you know, that she isn’t good at making friends, because she lives in a graveyard and people don’t talk to her because they think that her mother’s a witch, so she never had any practice at it. So, naturally, I had to make the first move. But it worked out fine, because here we are. And I told her we’d stay friends once we got to school, so once we’re in the right schools everything will be all right again.”

“Wh—what are you talking about? Stay friends?” Hester’s head was swimming, but the last thing that Sophie had said stood out clear as day. “So you’re saying that you want her in this school?”

“Well, of course I do!” Sophie started walking faster, and and Hester hastened to keep up. “I know she might seem like she’s bitter and grim and...unkempt, but she’s sweet, she really is. And besides, I thought people like you liked those things.”

“I do—we do! We do like these things,” Hester corrected herself. “And I’d much rather have her at this school than you.” 

“So we’re agreeing on something?” Sophie said, planting herself in the middle of the corridor and causing protests and shouts from the students behind them. “Because maybe you could help me get into the right school.”

“Okay, fine, sure,” said Hester. “Then you’ll be out of the picture, and we’ll get...Agatha as a roommate instead of you.” Agatha’s scowl flashed into Hester’s mind once more, and the corners of her mouth tugged upwards. 

_Interrogator, remember?_ Hester forced her face back into a scowl of her own. “Even if she is another Reader.” 

Sophie looked down at her black robe and frowned. “Good. I need to get out of this potato sack as soon as possible.” She attempted to sashay ahead but was clearly not accustomed to her new clunky boots and stumbled over her own feet. Pink splotched over her checks, and after a quick look-around to make sure that no one had cared, she resumed her strut down the hallway. 

“What was that all about?” a raspy voice spoke from behind Hester. Hester’s head jerked back over her shoulder to where Anadil was standing. 

“Don’t tell me that you’re warming up to her already.”

“How could I be ‘warming up to her’?” Hester asked. “I’ve never even met her.”

Anadil’s eyes narrowed. “I’m talking about Sophie. And you’re talking about…?”

“I’m talking about what I was talking about with Sophie,” said Hester, grabbing Anadil’s arm and pulling her so that they were walking side to side. “Get this. You know that girl who threw the bird at Sophie?”

“Of course,” said Anadil with a hint of a fond grin. “Wish I’d thought of it first.”

“Well, she’s the other Reader,” Hester continued, “and Sophie said that they must have been put into the wrong schools, and she wants to switch back.”

“So we could get rid of Sophie?” One of Anadil’s rats peeped out of her sleeve, and Anadil picked it up, stroking its head with a smirk. “I like where this is going.”

“And that means we get Agatha—her name is Agatha,” Hester added. “We would be a perfect coven. Even with Dot. She’s much better now that she hates Sophie.”

Anadil nodded and lifted her rat onto her shoulder. “If you say so.”

“Could you imagine the face of the Evers that would see us coming?” said Hester, a picture of all of them stalking along already painting itself in her mind. “Once Agatha got out of that frilly pink dress and into something more fearsome, even Tedros of Camelot would soil himself on the spot. I bet her villain talent is Evil as can be.”

“You think it is?” Anadil asked.

“I know it is,” Hester scoffed, throwing a hand in the air. “Have you _seen_ her? Tell me you don’t want to get her into our coven as soon as possible.”

“It’s about getting rid of that blonde brat first and foremost,” Anadil reminded her. “Then we can talk about...Agatha. But if one brings about the other, then Agatha might turn out to be a perfect fit after all. ”

Hester fought back a smile. Voluntarily helping out a princessy twit like Sophie might be a sucker punch to the ego, but it was going to be so, so worth it.

 

Because they would be rid of Sophie, of course. Nothing else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter feels far too short for the amount of time that I spent on it but look! I'm still kicking here! Also augh I promise that Hester and Anadil will like Dot more very soon


	3. An Excess of Water

Switching Sophie and Agatha turned out to be more of an endeavor than originally anticipated, mainly due to the fact that Sophie didn’t actually have what one could call a “plan”. 

“Well, when there’s a will, there’s a way!” Sophie quipped, raking her fingers through her hair for want of a comb. “And I’m more than _willing_ to become a princess, so there must be a _way_ for me to get to the right school.”

“Or a way to get to the Doom Room,” grumbled Hester, “which is exactly where you’ll be headed if you just try to waltz on over to across the lake.”

Sophie gasped and tossed her hair over one shoulder. “Ooh, speaking of waltzing—” 

“Will you stop trying to look pretty for one second?” Hester barked. “I want you gone and Agatha here as much as you do. In case you’ve forgotten, I’m _helping_ you.”

“You wouldn’t understand the need to beautify,” Sophie muttered, sighing as she fished a metal nail file out of her school-issued rucksack. “Once I finally join my people, I, unlike you, evidently, will not be trying to scare them senseless. If you want to get anywhere in the world, nothing matters more than a good first impression,” she recited as if by rote. 

“Oh, I think you’re already making quite a reputation for yourself, love,” Dot grouched from her bed, snapping a chocolate quill in half with surprising viciousness. It was not difficult for Hester to imagine the quill as a neck. Maybe Dot was a perfect fit for Malice all along. 

“I _said_ I was sorry,” groaned Sophie, buffing her nails with the file. “Besides, you won’t have to deal with me for much longer.” She flipped open a compact case full of pressed pink powder and surveyed her surroundings. “At least you wouldn’t if I had a mirror. And a blush brush.” Sophie wandered over to an exposed pipe in the corner of the room. “Anadil, would you be a dear and help me undo this? You seem to be the one who hates me the least right now.”

Anadil shot her a look. “I don’t know what gave you that impression. And that pipe carries water, Sophie. So, no.”

“Fine,” Sophie snapped, brandishing the nail file. “ If I have to everything myself around here, then I will.” She slotted the nail file into the head of one of the bolts and twisted at it, straining as she adjusted and re-adjusted her grip. “I thought that a villain like you would at least be prepared for a little bit of helpful rule-breaking.”

“We break Good’s rules,” stressed Hester. “This is so we don’t die before we even achieve anything, you twit.”

“Well, if you’ll pardon my tone,” Sophie seethed, her voice dripping with sickly sweet saccharine as she moved on to the next bolt, “it seems like villains are already dying, because that’s what you people do. You lose, and you die, because that’s what Evil deserves.”

The room was silent for several seconds. Sophie went back to unscrewing bolts, muttering something sharp-edged under her breath. Hester glanced at Anadil, who, wide-eyed, shrugged rapidly and shook her head. 

“Well, that’s a bit dark, isn’t it?,” Dot finally interjected, exhibiting some of her usual chirpiness. “Seems a bit one-sided, though.” She glared at Sophie. “In my opinion.”

Hester groaned and plopped down on Anadil’s bed. “I don’t believe her. Every time I think she can’t get worse, she does.”

“‘Tis the way of the Evergirl,” Anadil sighed from next to her, dangling a scrap of grey-looking meat over the mouth of one of her rats. “At least she’ll fit right in.”

“I don’t know about her ‘fitting in’ with the Evergirls,” said Dot, scooting closer to the edge of her bed. “She wants to be a princess so bad, but I thought princesses were at least supposed to be nice and kind and caring and bull like that.”

“Oh, I bet she’s nice to lots of people,” Hester fumed. “I bet that little bluebirds follow her around, singing songs about how _nice_ she is. It’s so fake. The nice is fake, the makeup is fake—”

“Well, says the one wearing black lipstick and ten tons of eyeliner,” Anadil cut in with an off-key sing-song.

“That’s clearly different. She’s trying to look perfect. I’m trying to look menacing.” Hester rolled her eyes, scratching another one of Anadil’s rats under the chin.

“I’m just saying,” Anadil chuckled, “maybe it’s not so menacing to spend as much time on your makeup in the morning as Sophie does.”

Hester raised her eyebrows, almost snorting. “All, right, you take that back.” She shoved at Anadil’s arm, jerking the meat scrap out from between her rat’s teeth.

“I think you do!” laughed Dot, sitting up. “I think you’re probably as bad as she is! I wonder how long Sophie takes to do her makeup?”

“Oh, you’re wondering how long my makeup takes to do?” Sophie spat, punctuating the sentence with swift, sharp kicks to the pipe in the corner. “Well, maybe you would see it for yourself, if one of you bothered to help me with—”

The pipe burst, showering the small room with violently spitting water. Hester leapt up from the bed, grabbing Anadil’s arm to pull her with, and Dot shrieked, hurrying to the other side of the room, but Sophie simply smiled, snapped her compact full of blush back open, and hunched down over the water on the floor, gazing into her own reflection.

“SOPHIE!” Hester barked, shielding her eyes from the spray of water. “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?” 

Sophie didn’t raise her head. “No brush it is, then,” she conceded, swiping her fingers into the shiny bright pink powder in her compact and patting it carefully over her cheeks.

“Sophie, you complete idiot,” Anadil hissed, her tone razor sharp. She leaned in closer to Hester’s shoulder, ducking away from the water. “You do know that thing is going to keep going until a teacher comes to fix it?”

“It’ll be fine,” Sophie said distantly, squinting into the water and rubbing determinedly to blend the blush out and over her face. “ _Up in a tower’s a fair young miss, knows she’ll be getting a true love’s kiss—_ ”

“This is no time for a stupid shallow love song!” Hester shouted over Sophie’s warbling. “Anadil, are you hearing this? She’s singing. Why am I surprised? Sophie, I swear to—”

There were two loud sudden bangs as the door slammed open into the wall and shut back into the door frame. Having lurched into the center of the room, already soaking wet with water that had come from outside the room, stood a pale, black-haired figure in a wet, heavily singed (how was it both of those things?) pink pinafore.

Agatha took a deep shaky inhale, squeezing her eyes shut. “YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I WENT THROUGH TO GET HE—”

She stopped suddenly. Hester, blinking herself back into the surreal moment, followed Agatha’s gaze down to Sophie on the floor, singing an idiotic song to herself about marrying a prince.

 _Oh my god_ , Hester thought. _She’s still just sitting there fixing her makeup_. No matter what Dot might have said before, Hester was not “just as bad as she was”.

Hester’s eyes flicked back up to Agatha, and suddenly they met Agatha’s eyes, and they were locked in, and Hester wasn’t exactly sure what was happening. Why was Agatha staring into her eyes?

“ _Wedding bells are ringing in my ear, and I feel like singing now, my dear…_ ” Sophie’s singing voice faded back into Hester’s periphery. Oh. Agatha wanted an explanation for all of…this. Well, Hester was going to give her one. Was there some sort of joke she could make about Sophie now? Agatha would probably get it and laugh. Quick. Could she think of something at least mildly clever?

“She flooded our floor,” Hester blurted at Agatha, jerking her head at Sophie.

Evidently, nothing clever was going to be in store today.

“To do her makeup,” Anadil added, and Hester silently thanked her for making her awkward improvisation seem more like a synchronized, coherent thought.

“Whoever heard of anything so evil? Song included,” Dot chimed in with a grimace, and Hester decided to add a silent thanks to her. Why not? Dot was going to go through enough at this school. Hester was allowed to think something positive at her.

“Is my face even?” fretted Sophie, inspecting her made-up face even more closely in the water and taking no notice of Agatha. “I can’t go to class looking like a clown.”

Hester coughed a little bit to indicate Agatha’s presence, for Sophie’s sake, or at the very least, for the sake of Sophie leaving her forever. When Sophie still didn’t notice, she coughed louder and more obviously until Sophie finally turned her head around.

“Agatha, _darling_! About time you came to your senses,” Sophie cooed, straightening up and closing her blush compact with a piercing snap, but still continuing to pat and brush at her cheeks as she talked.

Anadil clucked her tongue as Sophie went on speaking. “Best friends, my arse. There’s no way that she should ever be able to put up with her.” Dot hummed in an emphatic expression of agreement.

“Well, Sophie says that she didn’t have any other friends in their Reader village,” Hester reasoned, shrugging her shoulders. “Maybe she just had to put up with Sophie because nobody else even talked to her, much less understood her. We’ll be so much better for her, trust me.”

Hester looked over at Sophie, calmly and playfully pulling at the sleeve of Agatha’s blouse, and Agatha, harshly pulling her arm away and snarling a response in Sophie’s face.

“I don’t think many people could be worse for Agatha than Sophie,” observed Dot with a huff, and Hester nodded, sucking in a breath. Agatha deserved so much better.

At that moment, Sophie glanced up at the three of them and smiled, wrapping an arm around Agatha’s shoulder to calmly guide her through the puddles over to where Hester stood with Anadil and Dot. “You’ll blend right in here,” she said with a smile.

Instead of biting back, Agatha immediately deflated, sinking down into her stance. “Because I’m…ugly?” she asked softly, and Hester felt a heavy ache throb into her chest. Agatha sounded so…pained at just the _prospect_ of being ugly. This had to be Sophie’s teaching at work. Hester just wanted to grab Agatha out from under Sophie’s arm, look her in the eye, and tell her that she was ugly, but that ugly was better, ugly was stronger, ugly held more power than pretty ever would. She bit that urge back, but it kept itself present in her mind. 

“Oh, for goodness’ sakes, Aggie, look at this place,” Sophie went on, letting her arm drift away from Agatha’s shoulder and back to her side as the two of them turned to face the other wall. “You _like_ gloom and doom. You _like_ suffering and unhappiness and, um…” She snuck a glimpse down at the scorched hem of Agatha’s pink pinafore. “…burnt things. You’ll be _happy_ here.”

“We agree,” Hester felt herself say, and Anadil and Dot nodded from beside her in affirmation. 

Agatha turned around. She looked so unsure of herself that Hester at once took up the duty of convincing her even more than before.

“You come live here,” she continued—

“And she drowns in the lake,” Dot snapped. Anadil made eye contact with Hester, raising her eyebrows and nodding down at Dot, not quite impressed, but almost proud.

Anadil then turned back to Agatha and grinned. “We liked you the moment we saw you,” she said as her three rats splashed through the puddles on the floor to gather around Agatha’s black clumps. 

Hester took quick notice of the clumps. They were just one final sign that Agatha’s true place was never going to be with the princesses she’d been crammed in with. She brought her eyes back up to Agatha’s and stepped in closer. “You belong with us.”

For a brief moment, Agatha stared at the three of them, seemingly on the cusp of walking over to join them. Hester nodded her head slowly, starting to bring up a hand to reach out—

But Agatha’s face suddenly contorted into anger and fear, and Hester’s stomach dropped. Agatha pushed away from them, grabbing Sophie by the elbow and pulling her out with her. “I’m not leaving you!” she cried to Sophie, tugging her towards the doorway.

“Nobody’s asking you to leave me, Agatha,” Sophie said, planting her feet and firmly yanking her arm back. “We’re just asking you to leave your clothes.”

Agatha shook her head frantically. “No! We’re not switching clothes. We’re not switching rooms. We’re not switching schools!”

Hester snapped her head over to Sophie. Hester hadn’t expected anything like this, but judging by the look on Sophie’s face, not only was Agatha’s adverse reaction to the idea expected, but it was downright exhausting. Sophie clicked her tongue and subtly nodded her head towards Agatha. Hester knew that gesture. It meant to drive forward with the attack.

 _Sorry, Agatha_ , she thought to herself. _It’s for your own sake. Well, that, and my sanity._

“We’re going home!” Agatha protested. “We can be friends there—on the same side—no Good, no Evil—we’ll be happy forev—”

Sophie gave a final, more definitive nod, and Hester and Sophie both launched themselves at Agatha at the same time, pinning her in place. As efficiently as they possibly could with two sets of wet clothing, the four of them switched Sophie into Agatha’s pink dress and Agatha into Sophie’s black robes. Once they were done, Sophie pulled away, primping and preening herself, and Hester released Agatha from her grip, standing back to look at her.

Seeing Agatha in the black robes felt so correct for her. As she got to her feet, Agatha was no longer fidgeting with the buttons at her neck or scratching at the carnations puffing up at her sleeves. She looked so much more comfortable in the black sack, so much more at home. And, most importantly to Hester, she finally looked truly Evil.

Sophie smoothed down her hair, flounced out her skirt, and struck a pose in the now-open doorway. “Goodbye, Evil! Hello, Love!” she proclaimed before dashing out.

Hester took another long look at Agatha and she felt a genuine smile creep over her face. “And all is right in the world,” she sighed contentedly, raising her eyebrows at Agatha and hoping she was feeling the same way. “Really, I don’t know how you were ever friends with that tram—”

“Get back here!” Agatha yelled, physically shoving Hester back to chase Sophie out of the door into the hallway. Hester stumbled back, almost losing her balance before Anadil’s hand caught her shoulder and steadied her back into place.

For a few seconds afterward, the three of them were frozen still and completely quiet. Finally, Anadil broke the silence.

“Well, shit,” Anadil said.

Sometimes Anadil really said it best.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What's the first thing that happens in this canon compliant fic when Soman's eye isn't watching?
> 
> ANADIL SAYS SHIT
> 
> Haha anyway guys I'm not dead this was fun I haven't written anything in MONTHS so I guess I have self-esteem now


End file.
